Real Estate Week: Why Home Inspections Pay Off When Buying a House

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Never forgo a home inspection when buying a place to live. Let me repeat that. Never forgo a home inspection when buying a place to live.

When my husband and I first started shopping around for a new home, we saw a number of houses where we could envision ourselves living. On the surface every place looked perfect. But thanks to the insistence of our Realtor, she made sure we had each home inspected.

Now home inspections are not cheap, but the hundreds of dollars that we spent on them have saved us from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on money pits.

You see, before buying the house where we currently live, we went to contract on three other houses. In two of the instances, it was the home inspection that lead us to back out of the contract. (Our Realtor made sure to write in a cancellation clause.) On the third house the sellers pulled out on us.

In house number one, the previous owners had done zero upkeep on their 50-year-old house. And I mean zero. The windows were all painted shut (and therefore needed to be replaced), the concrete in the garage had settled, sloped and cracked (and needed to be replaced) and the roof had been leaking for years, leaving the insulation in the attic sopping wet (and needed to be replaced). Um, thanks but no thanks.

In house number two, here was the biggest problem that the home inspection uncovered: the house had had a number of floods in the basement. And the owners being too cheap to replace the carpet or wall board just left them as is. I knew there was a problem down there when, on inspection day–a day when it was raining–I walked down into the basement, and my eyes started burning.

“Something is down here that I’m allergic, too,” I recall saying to the inspector.

“It’s probably mold,” he replied, kneeling down on the damp carpet to look for telltale mold signs.

He found them–dark blotches–in a number of different areas of the basement.

“I could do a separate mold test right now, but it’ll cost $600,” he told me.

“Do it!”

I figured spending $600 on a house that I was going to buy for $600,000 was worth the risk.

Three days later we found out that not only was there mold in that basement, but it was the toxic mold that took over New Orleans homes that sat submerged after Hurricane Katrina–stachybotrys. This is the stuff that makes people really sick.

Not surprisingly we canceled our offer on that home, too.

In the home we eventually bought–and are now living in–we also paid for a home inspection. While it didn’t uncover anything that would change our mind about buying the house, it did clue us in on the age of certain parts of the house or areas of the home where we should plan to make repairs or get replacements in the near future.

In fact, the home inspection report came in handy last week when our contractor told us we needed a new roof. (You’ll recall we’re currently having an addition put on our home.) At first I thought the contractor was pulling my leg and just trying to jack up the cost of the job. But after pulling out the home inspection report, here’s what I read:

“Asphalt shingles typically have a lifespan of 20 years. The shingles on this roof are 16 to 18 years old. Budget to replace roof in next 2 to 4 years.”

Well, we bought the house two years ago, putting us right smack dab in the time when the home inspection estimated we would need a new roof.

So we told the contractor replace our roof. When it comes to homes and their roofs, you don’t want to be penny wise and pound foolish.

The same is true with home inspections. When you buy a home, you are making a huge investment. So spending the money on a home inspection is the best way to protect yourself from investing in a money pit.

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